If we read in a police report about burglaries, we may lock our house more securely; if we read about a flood, we may send our mite; if we read about an elopement, we may try to find out what happened later.  But if we read about all these in a short story, we have esthetic enjoyment only if the author somehow makes it perfectly clear to us by the form of the description that this burglary and flood and elopement do not belong to our real surroundings and exist only in the world of imagination.  The extreme case comes to us in the theater performance.  We see there real human beings a few feet from us; we see in the melodrama how the villain approaches his victim from behind with a dagger; we feel indignation and anger:  and yet we have not the slightest desire to jump up on the stage and stay his arm.  The artificial setting of the stage, the lighted proscenium before the dark house, have removed the whole action from the world which is connected with our own deeds.  The consciousness of unreality, which the theater has forced on us, is the condition for our dramatic interest in the events presented.  If we were really deceived and only for a moment took the stage quarrel and stage crime to be real, we would at once be removed from the height of esthetic joy to the level of common experience.

We must take one step more.  We need not only the complete separation from reality by the changed forms of experience, but we must demand also that this unreal thing or event shall be complete in itself.  The artist, therefore, must do whatever is needed to satisfy the demands which any part awakens.  If one line in the painting suggests a certain mood and movement, the other lines must take it up and the colors must sympathize with it and they all must agree with the pictured content.  The tension which one scene in the drama awakens must be relieved by another.  Nothing must remain unexplained and nothing unfinished.  We do not want to know what is going on behind the hills of the landscape painting or what the couple in the comedy will do after the engagement in the last act.  On the other hand, if the artist adds elements which are in harmony with the demands of the other parts, they are esthetically valuable, however much they may differ from the actual happenings in the outer world.  In the painting the mermaid may have her tail and the sculptured child may have his angel wings and fairies may appear on the stage.  In short, every demand which is made by the purpose of true art removes us from reality and is contrary to the superficial claim that art ought to rest on skillful imitation.  The true victory of art lies in the overcoming of the real appearance and every art is genuine which fulfills this esthetic desire for history or for nature, in its own way.